WHITE HILLS

WHITE HILLS – ‘So You Are…So You’ll Be’Life is too short and time too precious. What makes you think, ‘pioneer’, that your sprawling, drained-out drudgery contains anything of note? Beyond its obvious boundaries, what is there to draw me away from my daily routine? Continued minutes of wide open vacuous noise-scapes and irritating feedback? Indecipherable lyricism that might as well not be there? Expectation can drown your hopes; hinder your productivity. I recall preceeding crops have yielded little. What advancement, if any? Ah screw it!….this space rock trio from New York have previously failed miserably to excite or entertain these ears with long winded, drawn and directionless jam journeys. We’d given up hope of hearing anything of note or relevance; anything with character or some kind of distinguishable uniqueness. Despite still, occassional plains of meaningless white noise, White Hills 7th LP carries some truly insurmountable walls of searing white-hot Rock that’ll burn your eyes and bleed your ears dry. Where previous odyssey’s such as 11’s H-P1 merely served to confuse and frustrate, So You Are…breaks new ground with a more focussed vision of the future. Recorded in Brooklyn under the watchful gaze of Martin Bisi – Dave W, Ego Sensation and Nick Name have discarded the overabundance and curated a collection that’s three quarters sensational. Huge pulsating basslines underpin a garage-snare and soaring beams of guitar lead to score the face of the earth. Take ‘In Your Room’, the 70’s psychedelia of the title track and album highlight ‘Forever In Space (Enlightened)’ as most recognisable, bleeding out into the howling frenzy of ‘Rare Upon The Earth’ and the electronic muscular spine of ‘Mist (Winter)’. Its oblique and abstract with a wandering spirit thats endearing and enticing to follow; surging with electricity and inevitable destiny. Somehow effortless and truly unchartered, this is bold work and interstellar synonyms aside, with So You Are…White Hills bid you abandon all doubt and fear, to join them on their most focussed and mind-warping exploration to date. (8)STEVE FLETCHER